


acts of man

by subcas



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Leverage!AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 09:24:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6000778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subcas/pseuds/subcas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thought they’d find a way out until the moment one of the men put a gun to Grantaire’s head and pulled the trigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	acts of man

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this prompt](http://glade-mother.tumblr.com/post/53720877077/can-i-just-have-a-fic-where-les-amis-or-just-e), even though i didn't really end up filling it.

He’d thought they’d find a way out.

That’s the way it always happened. Somehow, with luck or guts or a stroke of genius or a goddamn lightning bolt out of the sky, the cavalry arrived. Combeferre hacked their security system and blew the lights out and they made their escape as practiced as thieves in the night. Bahorel kicked down the door, chest heaving and glistening with sweat. Courfeyrac swooned or crooned or lied his way inside. Éponine double-dealed in whispers and half-truths until she'd set one side against the other and spirited them off while everyone was busy watching each other out of the corner of their eyes. And at the end they’d laugh because they’d pulled it off again.

For the next few hours everything would be soft around the edges. Punch drunk and giddy with adrenaline comedown, they’d sit shored up next to each other and raise a glass in celebration.

He’d thought they’d find a way out until the moment one of the men put a gun to Grantaire’s head and pulled the trigger.

The scream that ripped its way out of Enjolras’s throat sounded like the keen of an animal with its foot in a trap. It was a shredded and cracked thing, so sharp-tipped that its afterimage burned in his mouth, and when it guttered and died for one trembling bright red moment, he thought it tore his vocal cords out with it and that sound would be his last covenant with Grantaire. _If he gets up,_ Enjolras bargained desperately, _I’ll never speak again._

There was blood on the floor and Grantaire did not move.

Enjolras thought he should get up and kneel over him, take his hands and press the blood back into his veins, shake his shoulder like he was waking him up from a nap. _That’s not funny, Grantaire,_ he would say, and he would open his eyes and grin a grin, that ghoulish wound turned into nothing more than dimestore makeup, that said _it’s a little funny though._

“That’s not funny,” he wanted to scream, over and over, until someone, anyone stepped in and put a stop to it. A disappointed schoolteacher chivvying his charges about a prank that’d gone too far with a pursed lip “that’s enough.”

There was rope around his wrists and rope around his ankles and Enjolras couldn’t believe a length of twisted polyester could lash down the tempest in his chest but he couldn’t move, couldn’t go to Grantaire’s side, so it must be enough.

The important thing was—“I’m going to kill you,” Enjolras said. He was. It was more than just true, it was Truth. Something as definite and inborn as a human right, not laid down by men but decreed by the absolute. 

This man had ended Grantaire. The way he laughed too loud and the way he buttered his toast and the way he frowned while reading and the way he always had to count change out on his fingers and the way he tried to hide it and the way Enjolras didn’t care.

He’d been laughing just a few minutes ago. Enjolras had practically been vibrating with fury but Grantaire laughed, because that’s what he did. He didn’t know the joke. He’d been too tense with anger, his mind pacing out plans as fast as he could, dissecting and discarding them, to listen to the sprawl of Grantaire’s voice. Besides, he known what he was doing, they’d done this a hundred times, there was nobody better than Grantaire at pure distraction. Oh, you wanted to convince a mark to do something? Courfeyrac could sell sin to saints. But if you wanted to talk a man into his grave, well, Grantaire couldn’t be stopped for love or money.

Of course, they’d found a way.

They weren’t his last words, that had been the _Enjolras_ that fell from his lips as he felt the weight of the barrel on his skull, but it felt wrong that Enjolras couldn’t recall each of his final minutes, like pressing a leaf in the pages of a book.

His name had tripped off of Grantaire’s tongue without fear, or even surprise, almost a sigh, but he’d held Enjolras’s gaze with leaden resignation, like he was apologizing for failing to protect him from something.

He’d known he was about to die and all he’d done was look at Enjolras with tender eyes. Like there was nothing in the world he was missing. Not when he could die in such fine company.

“Les Amis don’t kill,” the man said. “They’re _friend_ ly.” He smirked and Enjolras was going to kill him because Grantaire would never smirk again and he shouldn’t be able to have the things he stole away from him.

“You won’t have a friend left in this world,” Enjolras said. He would have to tell them all that Grantaire was dead. Right now, they must be working out a way to spring him and Grantaire from this trap. How could Grantaire not be alive when right now he was fully formed in their heads, ready to be released?

“I know a little bit about you, you know,” the man said conversationally. For a moment Enjolras wanted to rip out his tongue. But that was inefficient, messy, possibly non-fatal. There was no sense wasting thoughts on the most lurid and bloody methodologies of murder. The satisfaction would come from the completion, not the action. There was nothing he wanted from this man besides the cessation of his existence. Not his screams, not his penance, just his death.

The man kept talking but Enjolras did not keep listening. 

He couldn’t decide if it was embarrassing or insulting, the way the man was trying to monologue him. The vast overestimation he had of his own importance in the plot. Even Combeferre, with his endless dossiers, hadn’t bothered to draw up the paperwork on Paid Stooge #5. 

This man had stolen something from Enjolras, and thieves didn’t take kindly to being robbed.

Enjolras respected the law—

_“Who are you to decide what’s right and wrong?” A man asked him this once. He’d thought the law could be bought, before being brought in front of a man who had no price. “I’m the will of the people,” Enjolras said, “and you’ve been found wanting.”_

—But he venerated justice. He did not consider himself above the law, just beside it. Next to it, hand outstretched, ready to pick up where it left off.

And this felt like justice. He’d heard the defenses of hundreds of mealy-mouthed men, their venal moralities and motives, watched them fold under the sneer of his lip, carved out by scorn, weighed their words against their crimes and found all their debts unpaid one by one by one. He’d played judge and jury, brow unfurrowed and left Combeferre to court doubt, but never executioner. What wrong could death right? It couldn’t, but now Enjolras felt the truth like a stone in his mouth. Some wrongs could never be righted, just avenged.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a slightly longer version than [the one i posted on my tumblr](http://sextmen.tumblr.com/post/136935972810/hanbei-bee-can-i-just-have-a-fic-where-les-amis).


End file.
